This week’s selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22.

Composed in 1868, while Camille Saint-Saëns was living in Paris, the concerto was a rushed job. Legendary Russian pianist-conductor Anton Rubinstein was visiting Paris, and he wanted to conduct a brand-new piano concerto, one composed by Saint-Saëns, with the Frenchman as soloist.

Saint-Saëns, then 32, had already composed two piano concertos and his international reputation was growing as a composer and as a virtuoso pianist.

Rubinstein announced that he would conduct a concert in Paris in mid-May and expected Saint-Saëns to have a new concerto ready by that date. Faced with this deadline, Saint-Saëns wrote a concerto one at incredible speed--essentially in 17 days.

The concerto did indeed premiere on May 13 at Salle Pleyel in Paris, with Saint-Saëns as soloist and Rubinstein as conductor. Given the constraints of time, there were barely any rehearsals. Though critics found the performance untidy and even chaotic, the audience was enthusiastic, particularly when it came to the concerto's second movement.

Because Saint-Saëns wrote under pressure and had little time to polish his composition, the work retained an unusual structure, possessing few of the classical concerto norms.

Saint-Saëns composed the opening last, in a panic, to meet Rubinstein’s deadline. The result is one of Saint-Saëns’s most spontaneous and personal inspirations. The concerto begins with the solo piano alone, entering like an organist at the keyboard — a deliberate nod to Bach. There is no orchestral introduction, no standard concerto exposition. The tone is grand, noble, serious — halfway between Bach and Romantic rhetoric. It’s the most dramatic first movement in any of his concertos.

The mood shifts abruptly in the second movement, as the concerto goes from the tragic G minor to a bright, playful dance. The orchestra provides crisp, light support while the piano darts in and out. It clears the air after the brooding first movement and showcases Saint-Saëns’s supreme gifts for elegance and clarity.

The third movement is designed as a crowd-pleaser. It is full of sparkling scales, syncopations and fiery orchestral interjections. Its energy is contagious and provides a pleasant relief after the solemn first movement and the refined second.

The concerto ends in G major, providing a sense of triumph rather than tragedy. Saint-Saëns himself joked: “It begins like Bach and ends like Offenbach.”

After the shaky premiere, pianists came to recognize the work's originality. It has became one of Saint-Saëns’s most-performed works—often ranking second only to the Organ Symphony in popularity.

Saint-Saëns’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor is a mix of elegance, glittering piano play and structural eccentricity. Which is why it is such a favorite of piano virtuosos.

In this performance, recorded at Salle des Combins (Verbier, Switzerland), on Aug. 4, 2024, Mao Fujita is the pianist, while Charles Dutoit conducts the Verbier Festival Orchestra.